– UFC PRES DANA WHITE TALKS WANDERLEI VS. CHUCK

The fight
has been several years in the making. Saturday night at the Mandalay Bay Event
Center in Las Vegas, former Pride champion Wanderlei Silva and former Ultimate Fighting
Championship titleholder Chuck Liddell will step into the Octagon.

The UFC
held its usual pre-fight press conference on Thursday to hype up the event,
with several fighters and UFC president Dana White in attendance to answer
questions from the media.

Only things
weren’t all that usual as White looked more like a kid in a candy store than
the president of the leading fight promotion in the sport of mixed martial
arts.

“I honestly
haven’t been this excited for a fight in a long time,” he said in an exclusive
interview with MMAWeekly.com. And it showed on his face. White looked like his
Christmas still hasn’t ended.

Earlier in
the year, when he was finally able to sign Silva to a contract, he commented,
“As crazy as this sounds, this is the pinnacle of my seven year career in this
company. I’m so excited to have this guy under contract.”

As worked
up as he was at the press conference, much of White’s excitement was due in no
small part to the prospect of this fight finally materializing.

“Stylistically,
this fight is a crazy fight,” White said of the bout.

And even
though it isn’t the blockbuster title unification that it once could have been,
he believes it is still the most important bout in either fighter’s career.

“These guys
are both coming off of two losses. There’s more at stake and more on the line
for these two than any other fight they’ve ever had.”

Four years
ago, when he took, when only Liddell was under the UFC banner, it was easy for
White to proclaim that his champion would win in a hypothetical bout between
the two. But now, with both fighters representing his brand, and several years
of changes to each fighter’s make-up, he’s not so quick to pick a favorite.

“It’s going
to be whoever catches that chin first.”

White
had all this and more to say in his video interview “In the Cage” with
MMAWeekly.com’s Jeff Cain and you can check out the entire video interview for
free.